From ancient China to Marilyn Monroe – this fascinating history celebrates the joy of ‘bookhood’ One of the most familiar visual tropes to emerge from the pandemic has been that of Serious People ...

Portable Magic will be a welcome history lesson for anyone who shares this sceptical faith. Despite the bibliophilic feint of her title, Smith is swift to warn readers not to expect the sort of “book ...

Where does a text exist? A book seems like the obvious answer, but texts can be orally transmitted, etched onto banana leaves, or downloaded from cyberspace and read on a screen. Yet whereas a text is ...

Emma Smith’s wise and funny history of the physical book, from the Bible to boobytraps and Gwyneth Paltrow’s ‘blooks’, is a thing to cherish Most of us who spend our time reading books gobble up their ...